Monday, February 11, 2013

Night Passage (Universal, 1957)

The Mann/Stewart Westerns: the end of the affair

James Stewart

Anthony Mann

We reviewed The Man from Laramie (Columbia, 1955),
the last of the five Anthony Mann James Stewart Westerns, in December last year
(click the link to read that). I think it was the greatest of them. In some
ways it was a synthesis, a deliberate attempt to combine and sum up all the
features that had made the others so good. Mann himself said, “I wanted to
recapitulate, somehow, my five years with Jimmy Stewart. I reprised themes and
situations by pushing them to their paroxysm.”

Paroxysm, eh? I don’t know
about that but certainly the by now classic Mann/Stewart themes are there
(driven man-with-a-mission, tough-guy Stewart, wild terrain and so on) and
there are also echoes: Arthur Kennedy pushes Donald Crisp off his horse while
riding a ledge just as Robert Ryan did to Stewart in The Naked Spur; Kennedy and Stewart shoot it out on a mountain top
as Stephen McNally and Stewart had done in Winchester’73; there are others.

It was the most violent of the
Westerns and though tame by today’s post-Peckinpah (or Tarantino...) standards was shockingly so for 1955. But
the post-Second World War audience had, many of them, known worse in real life
and were ready to accept the realism. And it brought the Westerns into line
with Mann’s noir and war films.

Stewart proved his toughness by
doing his own stunts, rolling under spooked horses’ hooves in the fist-fight,
being dragged through a camp fire. It made the character of Will Lockhart more gutsy
and physical than the Stewart heroes in the others.

As I said in my review, the
pictures does have its weaknesses, notably in the poor acting of Donald Crisp,
Alex Nicol and, sad to say, Arthur Kennedy. Poor acting and poor writing of
their parts.

But Laramie remains the high-point and culmination of the Mann/Stewart
collaboration.

Of course, Mann made other
Westerns without Stewart and Stewart made others without Mann. It must be said
that while Mann directed some fine ones (The Tin Star with Henry Fonda in 1957; Man of the West with Gary Cooper in 1958) Stewart did not fare so well
afterwards: the pretty forgettable Night
Passage in 1957, the Western soap Shenandoah
in 1965 and the quite shockingly dreadful The Rare Breed in 1966. Yes, he worked with John Ford but only on later and
frankly lower-quality pictures such as the ho-hum Two Rode Togetherwith Widmark, the over-talky and studio-bound
black & white Liberty Valance and
Cheyenne Autumn, in which he really
only did a hammy cameo (as Wyatt Earp). Firecreek wasn't too bad but it wasn’t till his last Western, when he was 68
and suffering from deafness, that he excelled again, though in a very small part, in the magnificent The Shootist.

Let’s talk briefly about Night Passage because that was to have
been another Mann/Stewart collaboration. And indeed, with Aaron Rosenberg
producing, Borden Chase writing it, William Daniels at the camera, impressive
locations, Dan Duryea as the villain and with Jay C Flippen, Jack Elam and
Robert J Wilke all lined up in the cast, it looked to be quite simply the sixth
in the series.

Good artwork this time

But it was not to be. Mann did
some preproduction work and might even have directed a few of the early scenes
but Stewart and Mann seem to have fallen out. The whys and wherefores are not
quite clear but apparently Stewart was determined to incorporate some features
which Mann felt (as it turned out rightly) were, well, shall we say
inappropriate. Mann said later, “The story was so incoherent that I said the
audience wouldn’t understand any of it. But Jimmy was very set on that film. He
had to play the accordion and do a bunch of stunts that actors adore. He didn’t
care about the script whatever and I abandoned the production. The picture was
a total failure and Jimmy has always held it against me.”

It was pretty poor, Mann was
right there. Stewart plays and sings. He ought not to have. Mann’s replacement James
Nielson was an unknown and directed only three feature film Westerns, mostly
doing TV work. He really just let Stewart have his head. Unfortunately. Audie
Murphy as Stewart’s outlaw kid brother was pretty hopeless, I’m afraid. Duryea
chewed the scenery in a totally over-the-top way. There’s a hokey kid for
Stewart to impress (Brandon de Wilde, a bit more grown up now than the whiny brat
in Shane and not too bad in fact).
The women are token, honestly.

It was a mistake, Jimmy

Yes, the movie does have its
points. The Colorado scenery is great (and by the way if you can get down into the
Centennial State, that Durango/Silverton railway up through the Royal Gorge is
quite something, ça vaut le détour, as
the Michelin guide used to say). I also like the stirring Dimitri Tiomkin/Ned
Washington score (once you get past Jimmy’s accordion).

Audie. He never quite convinced, did he.

But it bombed at the box office
and was panned by the critics. You just get the feeling that if Anthony Mann
had directed it, it could have been another in the excellent series. As it was,
Night Passage was little more than a
star-vehicle B Western.

Same hat, same coat, same rifle. But the magic isn't there

You’d be better off watching
the 2005 Night Passage. I really like
Selleck in those Jesse Stone movies. Robert B Parker was just such a wonderful
writer. How we miss him.

Anyway, there we are. That’s it
for our look at the Anthony Mann/James Stewart Westerns. They are right up
there in the list of Best Westerns ever and every one is worth a look and a DVD
purchase. Make sure you get one of those wide-screen TVs though. You’re going
to need it.

2 comments:

I had read your thoughts on Night Passage some time ago, but refrained from jumping into the fray as I hadn't seen it.

Until tonight, that is. What can I say... Lord, I loved this movie! We have to agree to disagree (of course, mileage may vary...).

A couple of things: it looked gorgeous, and the score was great. Murphy was never better, and I think de Wilde was a great talent. By the time Stewart was loading his leading lady into a mining car, I knew this picture had everything! Best of all, Stewart wasn't haunted, brooding, crazed...

I think the reason this film gets a bad rapp is because there is an inherent sweetness to it absent from the Mann pictures. The tenderness between de Wilde and Stewart, or Murphy and Stewart, would never play in a Mann film. That undercurrent of sweetness is just not, sadly, part of the current zeitgeist, and we have no time for it. A shame really, because it is this quality that sets Night Passage apart and makes it special. (Heresy, I know, but I prefer it to the Mann films!)

I was just so impressed by the polish of this movie, the visuals, the deft playing (heck, I like Dureya), and the whole emotional tenor of the thing. A true Western gem!

Your enthusiasm for this picture has made me wonder if I misjudged it, or judged it too harshly. I actually saw it again last week (it was on TV) and I did soften a little. But I still hold to my view that it is weaker than the great Anthony Mann movies.

I too love Dan Duryea but there is no denying that he was a dreadful ham. Audie was a much better actor than he gave himself credit for (as a look at The Unforgiven will show) but I didn't think he was plausible as the kid outlaw brother. Jay C Flippen was reliable but hardly the railroad baron. And Stewart let himself down, i thought, with all that accordion playing and hokey charm. He was so much better as the driven man-with-a-mission of the Mann films.

I agree that Night Passage is visually fine.

As you say, we will agree to disagree. Life would be very boring if we all thought the same!!